It’s a cool late-summer morning, a sunday, and I’m sipping on my coffee that tastes like Columbus, Georgia. Having the windows open first thing in the morning is quite a treat, and I sadly anticipate the time of year this won’t be available. Each morning I’ve been trying to start the day off with mindfulness and body awareness. A breif meditation session followed by a radio taiso routine, sometimes I throw in some extra hamstring stretches at the end. This morning, I felt compelled to right for a bit before me and my new neighbor and friend, Annie, go for a run. It’s been nagging at be all year, this compulsion to write. The compulsion to read has be gnawing at my left ear just as much. Having treated myself to this new computer with this thocky keyboard, writing is just like eating a boston cream donut at the Brimfield Flea Market. That donut yesterday was something special. I’ve never in my life had a boston cream that rendered me speechless. Joshua being in grad school means he’s got a lot to read, and one of those things is Bird by Bird by Anne Larmotte. She’s a writer, obviously, but also a writing coach. Bird by Bird is Lamotte’s advice column of a paperback on how to be a better, and more fulfilled writer. Her advice is exactly what my old mentor from undergrad preached, just make. Just make all the time. Make when you’re happy, make when you’re sad. Make the worst stuff you’ll ever make. Everything is a first draft, and no one has to see it. That’s why you make all the time, so you can take those first drafts and dress’em up a little as a second draft, then a third, then you got yourself a nice piece of writing. It’s good advice. I don’t know why I’ve been compelled to write so much lately. I feel my piney-south georgian accent screaming to be heard and paid some mind. The idiolect I had adopted in Columbus was good, it served it’s purpose, and I expanded my vocabulary there more than I imagined. But at the same time I feel like I’m forsaking my mama, my nana, and my grandma by givin’ up words like ‘buggy’, ‘fixin’, and phrases I’ve already sent to this virtual peice of paper.